Ranked #3892

Buta

Young Animator Training Project/Anime Mirai short reviews: Part 5/12

Buta is a story about a lone samurai guy helping a kid find some lost treasure. Except the samurai is a pig. And the boy is a fox. Yes, all the characters in Buta are anthropomorphised animals. Anthropomorphisation does have narrative purpose beyond trying to appeal to furries. Sometimes it’s about grafting these animal traits onto human characters to emphasise that characteristic. Sometimes it’s about distancing us from the reality of events so we’re able to take a step back from the reality and spend more time analysing the symbolism which is the reason why Night on the Galactic Railroad decided to turn its brothers into cats. In Buta, it doesn’t really serve any purpose. If anything, it cheapened its story because turning the characters into animals distanced me from them enough that I didn’t really care about them. At least, that’s my theory as to why I never got into Buta. It could have just been the story was boring. But I’m rather baffled as to why they decided to go the anthropomorphised animals route anyway, so I’m going to blame it on that.

Verdict: Skip read more